THE MEANING OF PEDIGREE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 42, 2 February 1932, Page 11

THE MEANING OF PEDIGREE

What constitutes a good pedigree! Sometimes men have allowed their better judgment to be influenced by pedigrees, and have paid high prices for inferior individuals. The histories of certain breeds point the evils of such a craze. Yet when properly interpreted pedigrees furnish a vast amount of information, which enables the thinking breeder to plan matings more carefully, and thus provide for the improvement of the herd. A good edigress represents good animals possessing inherited merit. Too frequently an estimate of the value of a pedigree is formed in ignorance of the merits of the majority of animals recorded in it. The pedigree is of greatest value when the individual merit and the winnings of the various animals are recalled along with their records as sires or dams of winners.

A good pedigree is not necessarily a “fashionable” pedigree. Some men are satisfied if they can trace their animals through a popular “family.” It must be remembered that an animal in the fifth generation represents at the most only 3 1-8 per cent, of the breeding, while the immediate sire and dam each represent 50 per cent. Hence the value of the pedigree depends largly upon the individual merits of the animals appearing in the topi crosses. When the fourth or fifth generation, however, is largely represented by one animal or one line of breeding, then the pedigree is made valuable through the concentration of blood.